Wednesday, October 13, 2010

· A sales team needs to employ the services of a medical doctor as doctors are trusting doctors.· The solution provider needs to get involved as closely as possible to medical trials.

What are the key contributing factors for the adoption of a telemedecine solution?

· Facilitate the relationship between doctor and patients.

· Move data collected remotely where it belongs.

What are the barriers to adoption?

· Cost of entry for following up with some categories of patients such as diabetics, obese, etc.

· Cost of putting a solution together as it involves the participation of medical practitioners and technology providers. Seen from the medical team standpoint, it often costs less to work with college students.

· Reticence of medical professionals to adopting new technology as it is perceived as getting in the way of caring for patients.

How to get into the telepresence market?

· Understanding the re-imbursement mechanism is a key factor as it drives the incentive for medical practices.

· A solution provider would have to build a model of a medical practice cash flow that would account for the new technology cost.

· Identifying the right buyer is critical and may require some consolidation. An individual doctor may not buy in.

· Understanding the end-to-end care scenario is also critical. The reason why a black box is useful for home healthcare is that nurses are working on a prospective pay where additional visits are not paid for.

What are the key metrics?

· Improving the quality of care

· Reducing the cost of care

What are examples of technology that best fits telemedecine?

· SMS is preferred as there are not that many Smartphones in use.

· It does not need to be real-time for some fields, such as dermatology.

· Any technology that helps in submitting measures for bonuses in the field of evidence-based medicine.

· Help in collecting enough data to define a norm for a particular scenario, and in identifying when there is a variation from the norm.

· Note: HIE is orchestrating the anonymous collection of data.

What is evidence-based medicine measured on?

· Primarily focused on processes rather than medical data

· Currently more used to compare performances of medical practices

· There is no mechanism currently that would be close to a consumer report